The 50 Best Quotes From Self-Help Guru Jim Rohn

Last week-end, self-help guru Jim Rohn passed away from pulmonary fibrosis. Rohn was a giant who spent decades helping people improve their lives and after getting a request from RWN reader Eric Neill, I decided to put together a “best-of” list of Rohn’s quotes. Enjoy!

Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better.

If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree.

Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.

If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.

Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don’t fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day.

Affirmation without discipline is the beginning of delusion.

Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.

If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.

If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

It doesn’t matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You cannot make progress without making decisions.

Maturity is the ability to reap without apology and not complain when things don’t go well.

The few who do are the envy of the many who only watch.

The major reason for setting a goal is for what it makes of you to accomplish it. What it makes of you will always be the far greater value than what you get.

The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.

Success is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

Either you run the day or the day runs you.

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.

Get around people who have something of value to share with you. Their impact will continue to have a significant effect on your life long they have departed.

You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.

You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.

Learn how to separate the majors and the minors. A lot of people don’t do well simply because they major in minor things.

Don’t mistake movement for achievement. It’s easy to get faked out by being busy. The question is: Busy doing what?

Learn how to say no. Don’t let your mouth overload your back.

Good people are found not changed. Recently I read a headline that said, “We don’t teach people to be nice. We simply hire nice people.” Wow! What a clever short cut.

Your personal philosophy is the greatest determining factor in how your life works out.

To become financially independent you must turn part of your income into capital; turn capital into enterprise; turn enterprise into profit; turn profit into investment; and turn investment into financial independence.

One of the best places to start to turn your life around is by doing whatever appears on your mental “I should” list.

We can have more than we’ve got because we can become more than we are.

Happiness is not an accident. Nor is it something you wish for. Happiness is something you design.

Your family and your love must be cultivated like a garden. Time, effort, and imagination must be summoned constantly to keep any relationship flourishing and growing.

You must either modify your dreams or magnify your skills.

It’s easy to carry the past as a burden instead of a school. It’s easy to let it overwhelm you instead of educate you.

I find it fascinating that most people plan their vacations with better care than they plan their lives. Perhaps that is because escape is easier than change.

The ultimate reason for setting goals is to entice you to become the person it takes to achieve them.

Don’t set your goals too low. If you don’t need much, you won’t become much.

Don’t join an easy crowd; you won’t grow. Go where the expectations and the demands to perform are high.

One of the greatest gifts you can give to anyone is the gift of attention.

In America we have the greatest chance for opportunity than anyone else in the past six and a half thousand years. Never in recorded history have so many different gifts from all over the world been deposited in one country.

Economic disaster begins with a philosophy of doing less and wanting more.

The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become. That is why I wish to pay fair price for every value. If I have to pay for it or earn it, that makes something of me. If I get it for free, that makes nothing of me.

My father taught me to always do more than you get paid for as an investment in your future.

The worst days of those who enjoy what they do are better than the best days of those who don’t.

Some things you have to do every day. Eating seven apples on Saturday night instead of one a day just isn’t going to get the job done

We must all wage an intense, lifelong battle against the constant downward pull. If we relax, the bugs and weeds of negativity will move into the garden and take away everything of value.

Humility is a virtue; timidity is a disease

Learn how to be happy with what you have while you pursue all that you want.

Humans have the remarkable ability to get exactly what they must have. But there is a difference between a “must” and a “want.”

Make rest a necessity, not an objective. Only rest long enough to gather strength.

We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.

The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized – never knowing.